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Outriders

In June 1998, 50 people embarked on a month-long bus odyssey to gather stories of people struggling with poverty due to welfare cuts and downsizing.

Premiere Date

June 1, 2000

Length

60 minutes

Funding Initiative

Series and Special Projects

Producer

Pamela Yates

Pamela Yates is an American documentary filmmaker. She was born and raised in the Appalachian coal-mining region of Pennsylvania, but ran away from home at age 16 to live in New York City. Yates is a co-founder of Skylight Pictures, a production company dedicated to making media about human rights and the quest for justice. Four of Yates's films — When the Mountains Tremble; Poverty Outlaw; Takeover,…Show moreand The Reckoning— were nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and When the Mountains Tremble won the Special Jury Award in 1984. Her film, State of Fear: The Truth about Terrorism, has been translated into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 countries. Her most recent film, The Reckoning, is about the first six tumultuous years of the International Criminal CourtGranito is the third in her transitional justice quartet of films. Show less

Peter Kinoy

Peter Kinoy is an American documentary filmmaker and film editor. Four of his films (Poverty Outlaw, Takeover, Teen Dreams and Teatro!) were nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and When The Mountains Tremble won the award in 1984. State of Fear: The Truth about Terrorism, which he co-wrote and edited, won the 2006 Overseas…Show morePress Club Award for “Best Reporting in Any Medium on Latin America”. He co-wrote the 1986 documentary Witness to Apartheid, which was nominated for an Academy Award, with Sharon I. Sopher, the film’s producer and director. Show less

We fund untold stories for public media.

The Film

In June 1998, 50 people, mostly women and children, all poor, some homeless, boarded a bus in Philadelphia. They are members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union — an organization composed of and guided by poor and homeless people — embarking on an odyssey to meet America. For a month they crisscross the country, gathering stories from people who, like themselves, have been cut off welfare or downsized from their jobs. Outriders is the human story of the riders on the New Freedom Bus and the remarkable people they meet.